My Opinion on Technology in Sports

I'm an admitted sports junky. I'm one of those people who spends too much time watching games, getting updates on ESPN, and so on. Living in the New York metro area, there's never a shortage of sports to watch, either live or on television.

A few incidents that occurred just this week (one to me personally and one to the sport of baseball) put the technology in sports discussion front and center. First was the decision by Major League Baseball (MLB) to incorporate instant replay into its umpiring scheme. Baseball purists are likely at arms with this decision, claiming that the rare missed or wrong call is just part of the game. The opposite argument is obvious: If we have the technology available to ensure that no calls are missed, why wouldn't we take advantage of it?

The missteps that occurred in the National Football League (NFL) set a good example for the MLB. It took the NFL many years to come up with a formula that works. It's not perfect, but it'll never be perfect. It's good enough. Hopefully baseball leaders can come up with something quicker that most people can live with (you'll never please everybody, no matter what).

The personal incident, one that allowed me to cross an item off my bucket list, was attending a baseball game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, where the hometown Cubs played the St. Louis Cardinals. I've been to lots of games in my years and at stadiums in many cities across the country, but this was my first visit to Wrigley.

The thing that was so appealing about this stadium was its lack of technology. Most of the stadium is open-air, and the luxury suites that dominate the newer stadiums were quite reserved (figuratively, not literally). The main scoreboards were manually operated (the operator sits inside the scoreboard, putting up the big numbers as the scores and innings change). And there was no blaring music, subway races, or other annoying nonsense between innings. It was just baseball the way it ought to be.

Then there are countless other ways that technology has not so much improved the game, but benefited the athletes that play the games. For example, the equipment is far improved, including the helmets and various braces worn by football players, as well as the tests performed by doctors to ensure that a player is fit to the return to the field, the court, the diamond, the ice, and so on.

Another huge change in sports is in the field of sports medicine. It truly amazes me to see how quickly an athlete can return from an injury that some years ago would have ended a career. From knees to shoulders to elbows, the advances in arthroscopic surgery are remarkable.

Then there's technology in golf. To see modern golfers hit the ball as far as they do is clearly the result of a combination of better equipment in their hands and better equipment in their gyms. The only aspect I can't figure out is why all this great technology isn't improving my golf game.

Rich, I'm all for the addition of instant replay for baseball umps. I've seen too many heartbreaking wrong calls. I'd like to see it stop calls like the one that cheated Armando Galarraga of the Tigers out of his perfect game in 2010.

I too attended a game at Wrigley Field. Lovely stadium. When I attended, Harry Caray leaned out of the announcer's window and sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Unforgettable.

Richard, there is no doubt that technology can be used in almost all games for accurate and pin point decision making. In cricket, such technologies are using for concluding the third umpire decisions.

I'm a fan of motorsports, especially MotoGP (the top class of motorcycle racing).

It's crazy the amount of technology that has entered motorsports. Nascar has managed to limit technology, only starting to permit fuel injection last year, but most other classes are crazy. In MotoGP, the traction control systems are incredibly complex, utilizing GPS and/or similar technology, combined with lean angle sensors, and other inputs to specifically limit power at certain parts of the race track! It used to be the rider's skill at throttle manipulation to control all of this, but the electronics have replaced or supplimented this skill.

Jim_E, that's an interesting one, because the technology that's available to the people building the cars/motorcycles would let them build machines that are potentially too powerful for their own good.

Earlier this week on the MICHAEL MEDVED radio Talk Show, he addressed this topic w/ two representatives of note. One fellow, located in the Seattle area, has produced a shocking docudrama describing some of the issues w/ the modern game of football, and who should be eligible to plat that game. I believe the movie is titled, the UNITED STATES of Paranoia. On the other side of the discussion was a fellow who supported the "safety" of the game. Certain statistics were bandied about, deaths due to head-butting on-field injuries, etc. While the whole hour show is too much to discuss here, suffice it to say that the arguments for limiting the game of football to youngsters was very compelling in my mind. On one hand, their was great praise for the "modern" equipment being used, BUT on the other, it showed that the game had become MORE "violent" as a result. So, I would conclude that football in the days of Paul Hornung & Bart Starr was a much more benign game to watch, since the players weren't in a complete dominate-at-all-costs frame of mind. Thus, it would seem to me that this modern technology HAS CONTRIBUTED to the seriousness of injury on the playing field!

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